How Did Human “Races” Develop?

Figure 243: Faces. A few members of the human race from the following places: top row, left to right: Japan, Tibet, Borneo, Holland; second row: Ireland, China, Rwanda, Korea; third row: New Zealand, Bali, Okinawa, Israel; fourth row: United States of America, Australia, India, Egypt; bottom row: Molucca Islands, Canada, Greece, Guatemala. Visualize all without variations in dress, hair style, age, and skin color. How different are we? People continents apart laugh alike and cry alike. Yes, our personalities, experiences, and talents are individually unique, but our physical differences are small; our similarities are so great they are beyond measure.

In this context, there is only one race, the human race. Today, the word “race” has come to mean a group of people with distinguishing physical characteristics, such as skin color, shape of eyes, and type of hair. This new meaning arose with the growing acceptance of evolutionism in the late 1800s. The word “race,” when referring to physical characteristics, hardly ever occurs in the Bible.1 Instead, the word “nation” is used more than 200 times.

The term “race” may be used to describe ethnic groups, but is not a scientific concept. Genetic and molecular variations among the so-called “races” are trivial, although a few traits may vary widely. Human variations are minor when compared with those in most other forms of life. For example, consider the many traits in the dog family. [See Figure 3 on page 6.] Most varieties of domestic dogs have been produced during the past 300 years. Dogs may be white, black, red, yellow, spotted, tiny, huge, hairy, almost hairless, cute, or not-so-cute. Temperaments and abilities also vary widely. Because domestic dogs can interbreed with the wolf, coyote, dingo, and jackal, all are part of the dog kind. The vast number of genes in every kind of life permits these variations, allowing successive generations to adjust to environmental changes. Without this design feature, extinctions would be much more common. Besides, wouldn’t life be much less interesting without variations within each kind?

The following three mechanisms2 probably account for most “racial” characteristics, all of which developed since the flood, approximately 5,000 years ago.

1. Natural Selection. [To understand this often misunderstood mechanism, see “Natural Selection” on page 8.] This well-established phenomenon does not produce macroevolution, as a century of experimentation has shown; instead, it produces some microevolution. Natural selection filters out certain parental genes in successive generations, producing offspring with slightly different characteristics but less genetic variability. For example, fair-skinned people living near the equator are more susceptible to several health risks, such as skin cancer. Consequently, they have slightly less chance of living to reproductive age and passing on genes for light skin color to their children. Likewise, darker-skinned people absorb less sunlight, depriving them of vitamin D3, which forms in skin exposed to sunlight. In polar latitudes, this could cause rickets. Therefore, over many generations, dark-skinned people tend to live near the equator and light-skinned people tend to live at higher latitudes.

There are exceptions. Eskimos (Inuits) have dark skin, yet live in Arctic latitudes. However, their traditional diet, which includes fish-liver oils containing large amounts of vitamin D3, prevents rickets.

2. Cultural Preference. This takes the form of likes (as in mate selection) or dislikes (as in prejudices).

Likes. The saying, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” illustrates how a person’s culture may influence mate selection along “racial” lines. This has been demonstrated in geese. Blue snow geese live in one region of the Arctic, and white snow geese live in another. In an experiment, eggs from each colony were hatched in an incubator. The goslings were then raised by “foster parents” of the opposite color. The young geese later showed a mating preference for geese having the color of their foster parents. In another experiment, the foster parents were painted pink. Again, there was a mating preference for the color the young geese saw as they were growing up, even though that color was artificial. The old song “I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad” makes the point.

Dislikes. Humans also have prejudices—some people more than others. Prejudices based on physical appearances have caused wars, genocide, forced segregation, and voluntary isolation. Adolf Hitler had a fanatical hostility toward Jews and others and a strong preference for the supposedly Aryan characteristics of tall, blond, blue-eyed people.

This led to Hitler’s brutal steps to exterminate the former and increase the latter. An example of voluntary isolation occurs in Africa. Pygmies, typically 41/2 feet tall, live separately from the Watusi, who are sometimes 7 feet tall. Yet, both may live within several hundred miles of each other. These and hundreds of other prejudicial actions, operating over several thousand years, segregated many people based on physical appearances.

3. Small, Isolated Populations. A population of people, or any other form of life, has many genetic characteristics. If a few members of a population move to an isolated region, such as an island, the new group will have a different and smaller set of genetic characteristics (or a smaller range of genetic potential) than the entire population. As a result, later generations on that island will have traits that differ from the original population.

Imagine a barrel filled with marbles—half-white and half-black. Let’s say that each marble represents a person, and the marble’s color represents a gene for that person’s skin color. If pairs of marbles, representing a husband and wife, are drawn at random and placed on separate islands, about half the islands will have marbles of just one color—white or black. This would be similar to the dispersion and isolation of peoples after the flood and after Babel. If a husband and wife had the same genes for skin color (dark or light), then their descendants would tend to have the same skin color. The color of the marbles could just as well represent other genetic characteristics.

Actually, the genetics of this process are more complicated than this simple illustration. For example, many genes determine skin color, not one. Also, there are thousands of traits, each of which might cluster in an isolated geographic region if small groups broke off from the larger population. So, specific characteristics can easily arise, as they did when the eight survivors of the flood and their descendants eventually obeyed God’s command to spread out and repopulate the earth. From the listing of Noah’s descendants given in Genesis 10–11, we can see how early migration patterns began. Shem’s immediate descendants stayed generally near Ararat (what is now eastern Turkey) or migrated eastward. Ham’s descendants migrated southward, while Japheth’s descendants migrated northward. Undoubtedly, many other small groups colonized isolated regions, allowing their unique genetic characteristics to be expressed in later generations.

Understanding these three mechanisms—natural selection, cultural preferences, and isolated populations—we can now ask some interesting questions. What did Adam and Eve look like? Obviously, their genes, modified by degenerative mutations, carried all traits humans have today—and probably other traits that have since disappeared. Many of their genes were not visible (or expressed) because other genes dominated. We usually imagine Adam and Eve as looking like ourselves. However, for genetic reasons, Adam and Eve were not “white” or “black” but something in between. The Hebrew word for Adam suggests redness, because an almost identical Hebrew word means “red” or “to show blood.” Adam’s skin coloring may have been similar to that of Native Americans.

For the past 150 years, evolutionists have painted a very different picture. Man supposedly ascended from some apelike ancestor. According to the theory, because some early humans branched off sooner than others, they had different physical, mental, and behavioral characteristics. This is racism, a highly prejudicial school of thought that dehumanizes fellow human beings. One cannot say that evolutionists today are racists, although Charles Darwin and many of his followers were. Racism is unpopular today, at least openly, so public acknowledgment of it is rare. However, the theory of evolution provides a rationale to justify racism.3

Genesis provides quite a different historical perspective. We are all descended from Adam and Eve and from Noah and his wife. Consequently, we are all cousins. Think what the world would be like if everyone realized that and acted accordingly!